Combustion engines, including without limitation diesel type engines, include various operatively interconnected components, devices, and/or assemblies which cooperatively provide and/or allow fuel to be selectively combusted and to generate rotational torque which allows a vehicle to be driven. Many of these interconnected components, devices, and/or assemblies rotate and move in a desired manner. For example, a fuel injection pump, within a diesel engine, is rotatably moved in order to allow and/or cause fuel to enter various combustion chambers of the engine.
Many of these rotatably movable engine components, such as a fuel injection pump, often experience irregular agitation and/or interruption which tends to cause vibration and, more specifically, torsional type vibration and/or vibrational energy. The torsional vibration is undesirable since it causes fatigue to the vibrating component and/or increases the amount of stress which is transmitted and/or communicated to other adjacent and interconnected assemblies and/or components, potentially damaging these components and undesirably and adversely effecting overall engine operation.
For example, the torsional vibrational energy emanating from the fuel pump increases the stress which is communicated to the chain which typically couples the fuel injection pump to the crankshaft. This stress may cause the chain to break or fail, thereby undesirably causing the engine to fail and to be damaged and/or destroyed. In order to reduce the amount of torsional vibration induced stress and fatigue produced by a rotatably movable engine component, such as a fuel pump, it is desirable to selectively and substantially reduce, dampen, and/or absorb the vibration and/or vibrational energy emanating from that component.
Some attempts have been made to selectively reduce these vibrations by the use of vibration absorbers with rubber type elastic members which were respectively tuned to a particular frequency. Such attempts have failed to adequately function over long periods of time because the elasticity of the constituent rubber material varies greatly with variations in operating temperatures, and over a period of time hot engine oil damages the rubber. Furthermore, such prior attempts did not adequately allow the fuel injection pump, or the other vibrating component upon which these elements were deployed, to be easily serviced and/or quickly removed from the engine.
There is, therefore, a need for a vibration absorption assembly which overcomes some or all of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior vibration absorption assemblies, which substantially reduces and/or dampens the amount of vibration which is generated by and/or which emanates from a diesel fuel injection pump, and which allows the diesel fuel injection pump to be easily and quickly serviced and/or removed from the engine.